The curious case of the Alberta teenager found at the Edmonton airport with a pipe bomb as he and his family were leaving for a weeklong vacation in Mexico raises several questions, one of the most interesting of which is: what would really have happened to him if his name were not Skylar Murphy?

Murphy is the suburban Edmonton teenager who was caught with the explosive device in his luggage but was allowed to fly, and then arrested by a posse of uniformed police, complete with bomb-sniffing dogs, only when the family returned to Edmonton. He was charged with possessing an explosive device and convicted. He was given one year probation, fined $100 and prohibited from possessing explosives or ammunition for a year. As well, he was ordered to donate $500 to the University of Alberta burn unit. Murphy could have faced up to five years in jail.

A number of things stand out from the case of this misguided and forgetful teenager. From everything we know, he was never a threat to anyone at the airport or on the airplane. His explanation, which a judge obviously believed, was that he and friend had made two of these pipe bombs for fun, detonated one, forgot about the other one in a bag. He never meant to take it with him on a family vacation. Why airport security allowed him to continue his journey, waited four days to inform the police, and, according to some reports, even wanted to give the device back to him, are all things the authorities should look to resolve. Hopefully, this will never happen again.

But the nagging question is, what was the mindset that informed the actions of airport security in allowing Murphy to fly? That influenced the Crown to lay the charges it handed out? That made the court give him probation? In this age of no-holds-barred airport security where water bottles and shampoo containers are not allowed on airplanes, how was it possible that a man with a pipe bomb was treated so lightly? Were security officials merely incompetent, or had they been conditioned to act that way? Were they lulled into some kind of mental lethargy by the way Murphy looked, as opposed to someone from the Middle East or the Indian sub-continent? Would they have treated him the same way if his name weren’t Murphy, but Umar, Kumar, or one like mine?

A debate on racial profiling is still raging, with some arguing that given the race and looks of the people who engage in terrorism, some amount of profiling is justified in tracking and preventing these acts. But was a form of reverse racial profiling at work here? Did these officers, perhaps subconsciously, racially profile this Caucasian teenager, and give him a pass because he didn’t look like an obvious terrorist? On a scale of probability, how many of you out there think an Ahmad, or Bilal, would have got a different treatment?

The same can be said of the charges. This young man was carrying a pipe bomb that media reports described as a “six-inch steel pipe containing gunpowder with a four-and-half feet of fuse from either end,” but was not charged with a terrorism-related offence. I believe the charge was appropriate and it would have been a travesty to go with a more serious one. But again, if someone not named Murphy had been in the same situation, would he or she have been handed a similar charge, and would the public have accepted it? While you chew on that, let’s consider the sentencing. Murphy accepted blame and pleaded guilty and the judge in the case was even-handed in giving the young man probation and not jail time. This exemplifies why mandatory sentences are wrong, and why giving judges the discretion to mete out punishment commensurate with the crime, is right. According to media reports, Murphy could have been sentenced for up to five years in prison, but instead got probation. Some may see the sentence as a slap on the wrist for a serious offence, and I’ve heard some so-called experts say that in the U.S., this teenager would have been locked up for sure. Well, ain’t we all glad to be Canadian.

In our post-9/11 world, very little common sense is often applied when it comes to security. Once bitten, twice shy, the saying goes, and one can understand why the screws are always turned tight. However, it is heartening to see that in the Murphy case, both the Crown and the courts did not go overboard. Murphy deserves not to be in jail, but I can’t help wondering how an 18-year-old Rehan or Ali from suburban Ottawa or Calgary, who is caught in similar circumstances would have fared. Would the law have been truly equal and blind?

We will probably never know.

Mohammed Adam is a member of the editorial board of the Ottawa Citizen.

We encourage all readers to share their views on our articles and blog posts. We are committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion, so we ask you to avoid personal attacks, and please keep your comments relevant and respectful. If you encounter a comment that is abusive, click the “X” in the upper right corner of the comment box to report spam or abuse. We are using Facebook commenting. Visit our FAQ page for more information.